If someone needs a life ring, I don’t want to see them drown. But once they’re out I also don’t want them to fall in again and again. This is a wasted opportunity and has no dignity. 

We’re in a cost of living crisis. As the summer rumbles on and many think of heading off on the August getaway, a truly terrible winter awaits many. Whilst my electricity bill was only £63 in May,  I’ve been warned it will be almost £300 in December. 

What should we do beyond more sticking plasters and life rings such as foodbanks, hardship funds and reactive advice when I’m hearing already of those hardship funds running dry?

The cost of living crisis means costs are higher across the board, from food to petrol and energy bills, rather than prices rising in just one area. Inflation continues to creep up, also having an impact on the services and hardship funds that are available.

Housing providers, many still emerging from Covid and facing their own challenges, continue to pivot compassionately into the business of food parcels, debt advice, supplying fridges and support with utility costs.  

Having had a career that has meant meeting wonderful people from all backgrounds, my focus has always been those, who way before we started talking about it during Covid or the cost of living crisis, have the least. Against the current and seemingly impossible odds and even when donating some cans to the local foodbank feels good, our focus must remain on preventing the worst effects of this cost living crisis on those with least. This makes sense at an individual level as well as the systemic, human, team and financial level. 

Where does all this leave those of us in the business of supporting people to thrive long term and not patch them up with a hot meal? Maybe we’re in the wrong business. Arguably those in the crisis business have got lots of customers. Advice services, foodbanks and shelters do ‘really well’ in an economic downturn. They do well out of donations due to high profile hardship and get to make an excellent case for more funding. Need translates into demand in a way it doesn’t during the good times. 

But being old enough to have seen more than one economic crisis, we ignore prevention services at our peril. The price we all pay for enduring poverty is more children in care, more crime, a huge mental health burden as well as unemployment, spiralling welfare benefit costs, closed up and rundown highstreets, wrecked lives and missed opportunities. This is happening now and putting ever increasing pressure on that finite hardship pot that isn’t preventing people from returning for more help when they run out of money or food.

Prevention offers dignity and personal agency. Through the development of confidence and individual and community empowerment we build the awareness of the steps we can take to get the help that only we know we need.  This is the only way to prevent people falling back in. Intuitively, this approach also speak of our respect for tenants as equals worth more than souls to be saved. In turn this eases pressure on those providing the crisis help as well as their hardship budgets. 

A time of crisis is not the time to turn our back on prevention.

In the volatile space of social media, social landlords are challenged on their commercial business models. The case for size and sustainability often conflicts with being person-centred, having authentic relationships and ensuring all voices are heard – or good ‘engagement’.

It is these voices going unheard that has led to The Charter for Social Housing Residents. It highlights how residents feel patronised, ignored or treated with disrespect. And in the Queen’s Speech on 10th May (read for the first time by HRH The Prince of Wales), we heard about the much heralded Social Housing Regulation Bill. The Bill aims to hold landlords to account, and to improve accountability to tenants.  The clear ambition of the reforms is to deliver the change that tenants have been calling for.  So-called tenant ‘engagement’ goes to the heart of achieving what it sets out to do.

The aim is to develop a culture of respect, accountability and listening…but as at least one commentator remarked on the day ‘the devil is in the detail’. 

It’s hard to argue with the intentions of the Bill when the Grenfell enquiry revealed years of complaints falling on deaf ears. ‘Respect, accountability and listening’ ought to be a minimum. But housing, just like the government, appears a bit late to the party on good culture, values and authenticity. Even the Social Housing Quality Resident Panel, with its representation of just 250 residents, is no better than a landlord undertaking a quick fix tokenistic participation exercise. There is also little sign that it will be long-lived. One housing director talked of her bitter disappointment at the absence from the Bill of a commitment to a national tenant voice.

Saying you’re committed to listening doesn’t make it so

The word ‘engagement’ is the short-hand, overused term that won’t achieve the desired change. Flurries of activity, social media images and pride, long before the Bill was even announced, emit regularly from social landlords around their resident panels, tenant forums, community events and more.  ‘Engagement’ is the thread throughout. In fact, it’s been the thread throughout my career, most recently and starkly apparent (perhaps because it was the first face to face event in two years) at a Homeless Link conference where I was struck by the casual acceptance that we all knew what we meant by it.

Following the murder of Stephen Lawrence and the 1999 Macpherson report into institutional racism within the Metropolitan Police, the term ‘hard to reach’ was finally called out for what it was – a way of blaming communities that services had done little to reach.  

Using the word ‘engagement’ as the shorthand for achieving the aims of the Bill smacks a bit of ‘hard to reach’.  In the same way it feels as if we can blame tenants when they don’t engage. None of the Bill’s other ambitious challenges, such as tackling social housing stigma or isolation, can be successfully resolved for as long as we blame ‘hard to reach’ or ‘disengaged’ tenants for our own failures to reach them.

After the horrors of Grenfell, in the midst of a cost of living crisis and at a time when we are not building enough affordable homes, legislation is overdue. Everyone deserves a safe and secure home, including security of tenure, the feeling of safety when you close the front door and a life rather than an existence.  For too many, this is not the case.  Scarcely a week passed when a landlord isn’t shamed for the condition of their stock or the treatment of their tenants. We cannot take for granted a home, let alone one which is safe, secure and in which all voices are heard.  

We need either further clarity around the word engagement or to scrap it all together. Call it relationship building – call it anything – but if there is one thing that is ‘othering’ and will thwart engagement, it’s calling it engagement.  

The opportunity here is not to tinker with a few more resident panels and a ‘you said and we did’ poster.  This is an opportunity to build empathic and meaningful relationships and to reverse the power dynamic. One former director of social housing said: ‘we have to understand that people are not defined by their housing tenure and be prepared to give up power’. 

We have the will and the chance to create services that people want to be a part of, to remove the stigma and have effective and equitable relationships. The opportunity is to turn the Bill into something that effects change and delivers life-changing outcomes. Only then can we hope to avoid the tragedies experienced as a result of poor quality housing and a repeat of Grenfell. 

Rebecca White

CEO and Founder 

Your Own Place CIC

Our Your Own Place (YOP) Advisory Board (AB) is a group of individuals who have experience of what we offer: they’ve joined us through mentoring, employabiliy, or TILS+ workshops.

YOP + AB = YOPAB

The involvement of those with lived experience is vital to our development and that of wider services. Our people are at the heart of YOPAB and we want to hear their voice. 

YOPAB’s current focus is on mental health: they have formed a panel to discuss their lived experience, and how this can inform our organisation’s inclusivity and equity.

As part of #mentalhealthawarenessweek, with this year’s theme of loneliness, we asked one member to share their experience, in their own words:



Everyone has different needs, and that is something that we are discussing as part of YOPAB’s Mental Health Panel. Offering adjustments and fostering an openness towards mental health can allow the people who may be too afraid to ask for what they need to engage, succeed, and even thrive. Mental health conditions and poor wellbeing affect different people in different ways but they don’t always need to be a barrier.

I was signed off of Sixth Form because of anxiety and I couldn’t complete my A levels. Unfortunately, the adjustments I needed weren’t able to be put in place without a formal document or diagnosis.

Eventually, I ended up attending a different college, but my experience was so different and they were more open to making adjustments and implementing support. I was given a 1:1, allowed to work in pairs instead of groups, and as my needs fluctuated and changed, so did the support. For example, sometimes I needed quieter workspaces, other times I just needed the content of lessons emailed to me if I was struggling to retain information.

After a year, I didn’t need ongoing support, but knowing it was there through the college’s openness, made me feel more comfortable asking if I did need something. My anxiety remained but it wasn’t a huge barrier as I was supported to achieve despite it. The adjustments helped me to get a qualification I was proud of.

I then got a job- it was fast paced, busy and I was responsible for a lot; I was already aware of how this could potentially impact my anxiety but I knew I was qualified, experienced and willing. Having been in similar settings before, I also knew what may be difficult.

However, despite my openness at the interview, my workplace wasn’t receptive to adjustments and didn’t really understand anxiety; they were also under pressure so focus was elsewhere.

I worked hard, but after a while, my mental health suffered. My shifts meant I was missing appointments, so I started a medication instead, but that gave me unpleasant side effects and I had to be open about this as early mornings became harder. The option of adjustments was difficult within a short staffed environment though, so I was signed off sick instead and eventually I lost my job, which knocked my confidence.

With the Mental Health Panel, it has been good to talk about how mental health needs are still important to respond to regardless of a diagnosis or document, having faced that barrier before. It’s also encouraging to see how we can help influence the support that can be provided to staff with needs and requirements in the context of mental health, having had a difficult experience whilst working.

We’ve also talked about how adjustments don’t have to be major- it could be as simple as allowing a main break to be broken up into smaller time periods so someone can have regular breather breaks or a degree of flexibility to allow an appointment to be attended. As well as this, we have spoken about how even openness, understanding and empathy can sometimes be enough- listening to what a person needs can benefit both parties.

Small adjustments can make a big difference, and “needs” aren’t a bad thing- they are human.

What do you get out of conferences?  Is it meeting people? Networking? Space to think? Hot topics? Or simply time away from your desk? Sometimes we put too much pressure on ourselves to network, connect and come away with new ideas. Having consciously removed all that pressure from myself, it felt good to have new insights following a recent conference.

In early March I was lucky enough to attend my first face to face conference in two years.  You’ll be relieved to know that trains are as bad as they were two (twenty?) years ago and I arrived at Birmingham New Street two hours late in the drizzle. March 2nd was the date for the Homeless Link spring conference in the very effective Studio space where 100 people turned up to discuss supported accommodation in 2022.  

Running a social enterprise, it can be hard to find your niche and purpose at mainstream housing (and most other) events because most attendees are not founder CEOs.  That notwithstanding, the opening session, delivered compassionately by Rick Henderson in the week that Russia invaded Ukraine, heralded a fascinating day of space to think.  

With over twenty years working in lots of areas related to housing (whilst never working in housing) my knowledge is patchy and holistic in equal measure. Hearing from Sharon Thompson, portfolio holder for Housing and Homelessness among other things at Birmingham City Council, provided a human, compassionate, honest and compelling overview of the housing pressures faced in Birmingham with over 20,000 people on the housing register.  Balanced beautifully by Kate Henderson from the National Federation of Housing on the failings of exempt accommodation, the need for prevention and changes to housing policy – all of this was through the prism of 2022 and a cost of living crisis.

It didn’t feel like new news however.  Having matured in this sector, you become aware of the recurring themes and the dreadful reality that not only are we still talking about the same things as over 20 years ago (perhaps Network Rail have the same issues…) but for many we support, life has got considerably worse. Why haven’t we, with all our passion, commitment, cash and time made much progress on preventing some of the most intractable societal challenges? 

One part of the answer is language. The importance of language is the same for policy makers as for operational practitioners and it feels like it’s not made any progress. Language matters in a crisis more than ever, especially when we are prone to becoming more polarised. Values, vision and mission are more cleanly articulated in today’s organisations. However, these diverge into very different and inconsistent words and behaviours once enacted. It’s not that I don’t think we care – because I think most of us do. I think we fail to a) see leaders that demonstrate best practice in this area b) hold people accountable and have the processes and culture to do so c) articulate what values look like in action and d) acknowledge the impact our language has. 

If well-meaning actions and great ideas are executed with damaging, judgemental and prejudiced language, then our outcomes will be inconsistent at best, poor, damaging and a waste of public money, at worst.  Indeed, that our language is frequently questionable and even stands in the way of building good relationships, it literally costs us all money. We then add insult to injury by blaming people and calling them ‘hard to reach’ and masters of their own shortcomings after insulting them.  However great your policy, procedure, vision, mission, supported housing or Housing First offer is, your relationship with the tenant or resident (or person) is that upon which everything else hangs. 

So it was with interest that I was part of discussions at the conference, all of which centred around a lexicon that is common in the sector and for which we assume we know what each other means. During facilitated sessions I witnessed language that still displays an imbalance of power and respect.  Below is my shortlist of those terms that come up most frequently when speaking this so-called common language. Included in the list below I detail what these could look like in practice.

• Person-centred – means not telling your story five times, means empowering people to find their voice so it can be heard (and demanding!) and believing and trusting people to know what they need as the experts in their lives

• Responsive – believing and trusting what people say first, responding with no news as well as some news and bad news as you would in your professional relationships and communications 

• Restorative – just as the people we work with our experts in their lives (as any of us are) and more likely that many to have been institutionalised, empowering and emboldening through being restorative matters hugely.  From filling in forms, to finding places to go for help and exploring move on options – let’s stop doing this FOR the experts

• Independence – Getting away from the obsession with building independence.  How can this and its implicit isolation be desirable?  Isolation after all, kills people. If we want prevention and early intervention then we need inter-dependent resilience, connections and avoided costly crises. When are we going to start measuring these outcomes?

• Strengths-based – or asset-based at Your Own Place. It doesn’t mean saying everything is great when it isn’t (because empathy and compassion allow space to acknowledge pain), but it does mean drawing on positive solutions in the past to find the confidence in the ability to find positive solutions in the future 

• User-led – let’s drop the word ‘user’ for starters.  I admit it can be hard to find non-euphemistic alternatives, but when did ‘being hard’ bother our sector?  In practice it doesn’t mean co-production or asking people what colour they want in the lounge.  It means trusting each other with questions about what our values should be, how recruitment should be designed from start to finish, real opportunities to progress into the organisation and a voice in whether our outcomes, approaches and governance should change

The importance of language and what it expresses about how we value others cannot be overstated at this time.  This is not just because I’m a linguist, but because when you look into people’s faces and at their body language, you see and feel their responses.  People are in pain. If we’re to build relationships with and understand better, people facing huge systemic and personal barriers, we have to try harder and do better too.   We’re constantly talking about the people we support having to change, but what about us? Changing language changes actions and changing actions changes the result. So thank you Homeless Link and your conference for the reminder of why we focus so much on this at Your Own Place now and always.

After two years of pandemic, The New Tech Economy, citing many of us as glancing at our smartphones upwards of 55 times a day, also finds increasing numbers of people wanting to move away from them.

Before the pandemic most of us made use of digital devices in a range of ways to enhance, streamline and connect our lives. Whether our professional or personal lives, the developed west is in the grips of the tech revolution.  History will judge us as at the dawn of this revolution and no doubt laugh at our mistakes and lack of self-awareness of the harms, benefits and unknowns.  47% of people in the US feel ‘addicted’ to their phones and many of us are increasingly making changes to our relationship with them.

We have most taken for granted the privilege of being device early-adopters, with access to the whole world in our palms.  When Covid19 hit many more of us became aware of what digital exclusion meant. Never has so much been written about the importance of tech, staying connected, e-commerce, Zoom quizzes and the negative health impacts too. To say nothing of the impact on the planet, a picture is emerging of a link between device usage and relationship issues, quality of sleep, our ability to switch off and relax and concentration levels. And yet, whether we worked in retail, restaurants, healthcare, housing or the local council, digital inclusion is no longer a niche conversation for the VCSE (voluntary, community and social enterprise) sector.

At Your Own Place, aware of the barriers many people face to being connected online and not just within the homeless population, it felt both inevitable and cruel to be asking everyone to hop online more.  Our values were tested. As an organisation that believes people are best off making their own decisions most of the time, there was a tension between wanting to reach people with the only tools we had, a respect for their decisions and the isolation and desperate loneliness for those unconnected through no fault of their own.  Whilst many of us know people who died of Covid, we also know people who killed themselves or tried. 

As we embrace the ‘new normal’, for many of us in business, digital access remains as important today as at the height of the pandemic. At Your Own Place CIC, as was well-reported in our sector during the pandemic, we learnt that a digital offer reached people that a face to face one wouldn’t.  The reverse remains true also and for this reason digital now forms part of our permanent business model.  Digital exclusion and self-exclusion remain a massive challenge and I commend the team’s efforts in not just recognising the nuance of exclusion (it goes way beyond access to a device), but acknowledging that addressing that exclusion is an opportunity to build a relationship and build empathy.

So whilst we extend energy continuing to figure what to do with donated devices that can’t install Zoom (!), have no plugs, won’t charge, won’t turn on, how to transport devices across the region within budget to people with no WiFi and whether we have lost people to Zoom that would have benefitted from face to face, digital inclusion must remain a choice, but one where the consequences of that choice are conveyed and understood.